I release the version of myself who survived by accommodating illusion.
She did the best she could with the information she had, and I honour her — but she no longer needs to carry what was never hers.

I acknowledge the truth without minimising it:
I lived alongside secrecy, compartmentalisation, and deception for decades.
What I did not know was withheld, protected, and deliberately kept from me.
My confusion was not a failure of intelligence — it was the cost of loving in good faith.

I now understand that distance, silence, and separation were not accidents.
They were structures built to preserve a false self.
I forgive myself for trusting — because trust is not a flaw, it is a value.
I do not forgive the deception — I release it.

I return responsibility to where it belongs.
I was not meant to uncover everything while I was inside the storm.
Clarity came when safety came — and that is how the human nervous system heals.

As I step into 2026, I choose coherence over confusion.
I choose truth over appearance.
I choose calm over intensity.
I choose slow, embodied knowing over fast attachment.

I no longer need to explain what I endured to justify my freedom.
Leaving was not abandonment — it was self-preservation.
It was the moment I chose my sanity, my body, and my future.

I give myself permission to live unguarded again —
but never disconnected from my intuition.

I am coming back to myself:
to my perception,
to my values,
to my quiet strength,
to a life where nothing needs to be hidden to be held.

What was built on lies ends here.
What is built on truth begins now.

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“I did not lose myself — I protected myself until it was safe to return.”